Over the last 20 years of our careers, we have witnessed a significant decline in the respect for the liberal arts and social sciences. This decline forces us to regularly respond to questions about the relevance, value and future of our discipline. We know that political science provides fundamental skills for our students to succeed in the 21st century. Yet we also believe that as teachers and scholars we can do a better job of connecting to the realities of our students, articulating the skills and attitudes that our students will develop, and adapting our teaching methods to include high impact practices (Kuh, 2008) that focus on student learning. Here we argue that there are four important conversations that we need to have that can strengthen the appeal and interest in our discipline: the articulation of learning outcomes, the inclusion of high impact practices, attention to information literacy that recognizes the significant change in the delivery and access of research materials and a deep integration of indigenous ways of knowing in our teaching.

Recent changes in government policy making and the labour market have created new opportunities for political scientists, provided that we have the skills to respond to them. We argue that changes need to be made in the area of methodology training in order to capitalize on these opportunities. Canadian political scientists should ensure that all our students acquire basic quantitative competencies, in addition to research design and qualitative analysis training, and that those graduate students interested in more sophisticated quantitative methods have the opportunity to develop those skills. We explain how expanding and deepening training in quantitative methods is one strategy for ensuring a role for political science in evidence-based policy making, for expanding labour market options for students, and for keeping apace with disciplinary trends. We caution, however, that special care needs to be taken to ensure that all political scientists have equal opportunities to develop such skills.

Mechanism-based explanations are gaining in popularity in the social sciences. Canadian political science has somewhat embraced these debates. Recent work has explicitly identified with mechanismic explanation and, at the same time, there is a point to be made about the compatibility of CPS's cannons with a mechanism-based understanding of causation. In this paper, we survey past and recent work aligned with this ontological approach. We demonstrate a heterogeneous engagement with the methodological literature regarding mechanisms and different understandings as well as uses of mechanisms in political analysis. This survey allows us to argue for the potential of mechanism-based explanations for CPS while also forcing us to advocate for a sober and discerning use of this approach.

In this paper, we initiate a discussion within the Canadian political science community about research openness and its implications for our discipline. This discussion is important because the Tri-Agency has recently released guidelines on data management and because a number of political science journals, from several subfields, have signed the Journal Editors’ Transparency Statement requiring data access and research transparency (DA-RT). As norms regarding research openness develop, an increasing number and range of journals and funding agencies may begin to implement DA-RT-type requirements. If Canadian political scientists wish to continue to participate in the global political science community, we must take careful note of and be proactive participants in the ongoing developments concerning research openness.

What a lovely challenge: describe the books that best contribute to our knowledge and understanding of Canadian society. My first reaction was to think of those books that I particularly enjoyed reading and piece them together in a sort of long and personal review of key books. Then I came to the idea of knowledge and understanding of Canadian society and decided that the fundamental theme of this review should be the path, albeit a very slow path, we are on to reinvent the foundation story of Canada. The basic foundation story of Canada—that the country was first discovered by European settlers, that it was built from the top by the British Empire and that its stability and success depends on its institutions being maintained—is being undone. We are slowly recognizing whose histories have been ignored in this foundation story. I decided my review should follow the path of this rewriting of the foundation story of Canada. I will organize the review by the waves of books that analyse, advocate and interpret these different calls—by places, groups, bodies, projects—for voice, recognition and inclusion.